I'm in the midst of attending a conference where it is clear that most of the participants feel very strongly against both commercialized egg and sperm donation, as well as against anonymous gamete donation. These are not rare positions in Canadian circles, and are well-regarded in legal and other academic circles. In its most basic terms, the argument against commercialization of human gametes is that it is morally repugnant to put a price on that which creates life. The argument against anonymous gamete donation, at its most basic, is that it is not in the best interest of the children conceived from the use of these donor gametes who have the right to know their biological origins.

For years now, ever since the Assisted Human Reproduction Act became law back in 2004 and prohibited the purchase of donor gametes from a donor or a person acting on behalf of a donor, most donor sperm used in Canada has been imported via the US or other countries. Much of that sperm is paid for by the sperm bank in a jurisdiction where it is legal to pay for gametes. The sperm is then purchased either by an importer of sperm from Canada or directly by Canadian parents. Over the past couple of years, the same situation has become possible when it comes to donor eggs as the technology to vitrify and thaw the ova is now available so now there are not only sperm banks but egg banks too.

My best guess is that because of the restrictive and shockingly severe criminal sanctions in the AHRA (i.e up to 10 years in jail and/or $500,000 fine), more and more Canadian clinics and patients are going to turn to importing donor eggs as opposed to going through donor ova cycles here. To make a long story short, whether or not this is legal is a nuanced answer where the devil is in the details but suffice it to say that I think it is possible to carefully work within the confines of the AHRA to import ova into Canada in a legal manner.

The problem? Here it is: At this point, most egg banks in the US offer only anonymously donated eggs (it seems to me that the push to use known or open-i.d. gametes is generally much stronger in Canada than the U.S.). Further, my best guess is that all of the egg banks pay the donors for the eggs. Accordingly, in a quest to prohibit commercialized gamete donation and anonymous donation, we have pushed Canadian clinics and parents toward what many will undoubtedly see as a legally preferable process than trying to negotiate the legislative minefield that is the AHRA (which fails to clarify what is an appropriate reimbursement with the potential penalty ranging from 5-10 years in jail and/or $250,000-$500,000 in fines) which will likely result in far increased use of ova which were paid for in the U.S. and provided on an anonymous basis. Further, whereas when a donor in Canada goes through an egg donation cycle, we know she has publicly funded health care available to her, we can monitor the quality of her care, there are laws specifically targeted to ensure that she consents to the procedure, there is a legal system available to her if she were to suffer damages, there are resources (such as lawyers, psychologists, etc.) available to her, etc., We lose all such control over the process of egg donation and the resources available to a donor when the donation cycle happens outside of our borders. So, while the criminal provisions of the AHRA may end up keeping our backyard clean, it is at the loss of being able to do a better job with a uniquely Canadian perspective and bent regarding assisted reproductive technologies at the expense of the donors and the children born through the use of donor gametes.

A quick note about my earlier post regarding the legality of paying for imported banked frozen ova into Canada (read it here):1. I'm proud to announce that a version of the post was published in the Huffington Post here, and2. I heard through the grapevine that Health Canada confirmed that purchasing banked eggs and importing them into Canada is, in fact legal. I am hoping to obain confirmation of that in writing shortly!

On April 22, CBC’s The National aired a segment (Frozen Human Egg Trade) in which Kelly Crowe discussed how new technologies have progressed to enable human eggs to be retrieved, cryopreserved and banked in the US, and shipped to recipients in Canada. Dr. Matt Gysler, a fertility specialist at ISIS Regional Fertility Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, openly stated that his patients frequently purchase and use these eggs for their reproductive purposes in Canada. Dr. Gysler opined that just as it is legal to pay for frozen sperm imported from the US, so too, then, must it be legal to pay for eggs cryopreserved in the US and import those into Canada. CBC interviewed Ms. Levitan, a fertility lawyer, who disagreed with Dr. Gysler’s analysis. She stated that “it’s not a defence to say ‘but you said it was ok for sperm’…” and that she believed that people importing these eggs could face criminal prosecution. Unsurprisingly, this program was followed in quick succession by a number of further stories on CBC and other media. Suffice it to say that any Canadian suffering from infertility or looking to build a non-traditional family through the use of donor eggs likely absorbed the message that purchasing these banked eggs is illegal.

I respectfully disagree.

It is incomplete to state that the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (known as the “AHRA”) prohibits the purchase of ova or sperm; the AHRA only prohibits the purchase of ova or sperm from a donor or a person acting on behalf of a donor. The World Egg Bank, depicted in The National segment, has a program whereby it purchases eggs from US donors and stores them until such time as they are purchased by an intended parent. With recent technological advances, the eggs could conceivably be bought by an intended parent years after their retrieval. The egg donor is paid, though, at the time of retrieval, regardless of when or whether an intended parent purchases the eggs from the Bank, much in the same way that sperm banks function. Accordingly, the intended parent is purchasing eggs, but is not purchasing eggs from a donor, nor is the parent purchasing eggs from a person acting on behalf of a donor.

As Dr. Gysler mentions, Assisted Human Reproduction Canada has condoned the practice of purchasing frozen sperm from the US and importing it into Canada. To my mind, the reason that the purchase of sperm from a sperm bank is legal is not because of the Semen Regulations (yes, there is such a thing) with which all imported semen must comply, but because the sperm is not purchased from a donor or a person acting on behalf of a donor; the sperm bank (and now the egg bank) is not acting on behalf of the donor, but on its own behalf. The issue, then, has little to do with whether a payment over the internet is found to be a payment made in Canada, as stated by Ms. Levitan. In my opinion, even if the payment for a cryopreserved banked egg is made in Canada, such a payment is not prohibited by the AHRA and is therefore legal.

Two lawyers disagreeing over a legal analysis isn’t particularly interesting to anyone other than the lawyers themselves. What is interesting, though, and the reason you ought to care about our differing legal analyses, rests precisely on the point where Ms. Levitan and I do, in fact, agree – despite the fact that I am confident in my legal analysis, I, too, continue to be concerned that potential clients who engage in such a transaction could open themselves up to an investigation or to criminal charges. A strong argument that one has acted within the confines of the law is of limited comfort when faced with the risk of criminal charges, especially where the penalty for contravening the law is up to 10 years in jail and/or a fine of $500,000. As fertility lawyers, neither I nor Ms. Levitan should be in a position where we must advise clients on a daily basis that the law regarding egg donation is so unclear that despite best efforts to work within the confines of the law, the potential for being investigated and even criminally charged remains. Even more so, people struggling to build their families who must rely on third party reproductive technologies ought not be put in this untenable position.